The shit I've done... (A Mass Effect 3 rant)

"... Any other soldier would've been tried, court-marshalled and discharged."

I stand there, shocked. The words ring hollowly throughout the room as I do not rise to my own defence.

Unfortunately, my only crime is purchasing Mass Effect 3.

In many ways the big furore over Mass Effect 3 is about the ending and the lack of choice and thematic inconsistency with the previous Mass Effect games. However, I feel that the writing was on the wall as soon as the opening credits rolled on the last instalment of the trilogy.

Confused at this turn of events, my mind races back over everything that's happened in ME1 and ME2. In ME1 I was a hero: I saved the citadel and the council. In ME2, acting with the authority granted to a SPECTRE, I destroyed a threat to the human race and their deep space colonies.

"Wait... what shit have I done?", I ask myself.

It carries on. I watch as Commander Shepard delivers a soliloquy to both Admiral Anderson and the Defence Council; I'm powerless and, it's not me. Not my choice. 

The soliloquy is toothless garbage.

It quickly becomes clear that Bioware has their own idea of who Commander Shepard is and how the world reacts to them that does not factor in any of the roleplaying that they themselves had granted players in the previous two games. In fact, I just happened to be keeping a log of my thoughts and feelings throughout ME3 and here's what I wrote in the spur of the moment:

"This is not my Shepard.This is not my story!

The thoughts flash through my mind every few minutes or so. The beginning of Mass Effect 3 is having an adverse effect on how I feel about the ME Universe, my character and Bioware. Things have happened. Things I had no part in and no control over; things I didn't pay to have happen...

First off, I'm locked up. There's no explanation or exposition outlining what I've done or why I'm there. They talk about the Alpha Relay Incident and how the Normandy is impounded. Anyone going to clue me in? No?

Secondly, I walk into the council and deliver a long diatribe against the defence council and there's no options. I'm not given any chance to role play. The things my Femshep is saying aren't those I'd normally choose for her... Hell, even my evil Femshep wouldn't waste her time with this crap.

With ME2 and now ME3, Bioware have broken three golden rules:

• The first one is obvious: NEVER put main plot in DLC. 
• The next one is fairly obvious: ALWAYS provide exposition to give context in the story if you don't show the player the events in question. 

It's basic story-telling procedure: Imagine if, in ME2, they didn't show you being revived after being killed.... and all of a sudden you're working for (sorry, "with" - though that's now not what your character states in ME3) Cerberus. You would be wondering what the hell is going on. 

• Lastly, and least obvious, is taking away player choice in critical situations. Bioware has built their reputation on their reputation systems in their games. To play through two games which feature multiple instances where I am tasked with presenting an argument through my own choices in dialogue and then having that removed in ME3's opening sequence is just downright bizzare (or lazy).

It actually happens quite a lot in the game (at least as far as I've played) Bioware take your ability to roleplay away from you, give you limited, meaningless dialogue choices and, in the process, destroy the very role you've built up and that they had built into the franchise thus far. It's annoying to make a paragon choice turn one moment for you to then continue on the conversation in a different tone of voice.... one that is homogenised for any player and character."

I have to admit, the middle of the game is great. Superb even. It made me forget about the transgressions of the beginning and so I was lulled into a false sense of security coming up to the end of the game. Elsewhere I've argued that the ending and end themes were not well foreshadowed by events in the game. Looking back now, I see that the lack of control and complete disconnect between the character I built and the story I played were all the foreshadowing I needed.

I hated that "Arrival", the DLC that had you destroy a Mass Relay and kill countless millions of Batarians was part of the main plot. In fact, in the beginning you were meant to be on trial for those events - something I thought they'd skipped given its present incarnation. Even during playing ME3 I thought that somehow they had rigged it to take into account whether you had played it or not when I found a codex entry about some marines that had destroyed the Relay instead of Commander Shepard and their crew... But, thinking about it, if that's the case then the beginning makes no sense.

Why am I locked-up and hated? Even my old friend, Anderson, hates me. The things I've done? I've been nothing but a straight-laced hero and yet here I am. What did I do, Bioware? Why did I deserve this? 

As a SPECTRE I had extrajudicial powers to achieve my goals in any way that was effectively possible. It seems I managed to do this whilst using Cerberus in ME2 (I always denied that I was working with/for them in the possible dialogue options in ME2) AND steal their super-expensive remake and remodel of the hyper-expensive Normandy. In ME2, I'm still a SPECTRE and, in fact, even in ME3 I still have SPECTRE status so what gives? Did the Earth council hate how I showed them up by protecting the colonies they failed to do anything about? I don't know... Logically it makes no sense... Story-wise it makes no sense....

So, instead of starting off with the trial about the Relay being destroyed (why would I be being tried in a human court for killing Batarians? There's no intergalactic pressure for the incident on humankind as far as I can observe) they shifted events until after the trial, demonising me in the process. It's cheap and it's obvious that they only did it because it's easier to have everyone starting off from the same point regardless of their previous actions. It's also cheaper to have everyone end up at the same point regardless of their previous actions too... That's a shame.

However, the greatest shame about Mass Effect 3 isn't that they messed the ending up... it's that Bioware never had enough faith in their world and story-telling in the first place to let it stand on its own... It appears as though they instead judged their "work of art" by the pocketbook rather than the paintbrush.

D'you know what I mean?

There's a strange but wondrous current flowing through game design over the last five or so years that's slowly but surely changing the face of players' interaction with the medium; I'm not talking about motion-based control but intuitive emotional response.

Okay, so "intuitive emotional response" is a term that I've just made up... but as far as I can tell, that's exactly what these systems are supposed to be about. I'm speaking specifically about the Mass Effect (and Dragon Age 2) wheel and, most recently, L.A. Noire's "trust" system. These mechanics are designed to assign an emotional response from the player to an easy traffic light system of "Yes, maybe and no!". It's the easiest way of getting around the problematic issue of fully voicing games that have a lot of dialogue, providing both choice and depth. The problem with these early systems is one that psychologists and philosophers have wrestled with for many centuries... and it's basically that not everyone sees or interprets the world in the same manner.

Ideally, when people converse, we understand each other perfectly. I mean, we have words and numbers, facial expressions and body language. These are all tools that allow us to more effectively communicate how we feel and what we want. However, these tools are only useful when used in the right context and the right environment. Anyone who's been abroad to a foreign-speaking nation (and even those that have the same language, to a lesser extent) will know just what I mean here. Your "safe and known" context is thrown out the window in a culture that is different from your own. Humour is notoriously hard to translate because people's social constructs work differently between cultures. Gestures, specific words... jobs, gender roles, religion and history all play a part in how we are able to relate to the world of communication along with myriad others and they can't always easily be translated.

Moving back from that complex morass of detail, even to those people within our own culture, we see that communication and understanding of communication is not universal. So it is with this in mind that, although I think that these emerging IER systems are good, I say that I miss the old days of knowing exactly what it is I'm about to say.

There is nothing more frustrating in a game than when it mis-reads what you are trying to do. When you press jump near a wall and kick off of it, doing a back flip instead of reaching up and grabbing a ledge to climb.... it's annoying. So taking something like that, which can more often than not be repeated, and slicing it into an aspect of the game which is "permanent" because, unlike in most normal conversations, there's no take-backs or apologies in the defined conversing of game worlds (yet).... it's just asking for frustration to be aired. Granted, no game system is ever going to be per-... oh wait.... Text conversations were perfect, never mind.

Seriously though. If IER systems ever want to take off, designers need to realise that they need to tell players exactly what their choice will do and not just give them a vague set of rules that they don't appear to follow anyway. Perhaps some way of physically telegraphing your avatar's general mood when going to select the choice (e.g. during selection of conversation choices in Mass Effect) would go some way to avoid frustrating the player when an unexpected or completely disproportionate response is elicited from a seemingly innocuous choice.

The only bright spot in L.A. Noire is that you can go into a lie option and back out of it, without any consequences..... which basically means that you can usually eliminate one of the options based on your avatar's reaction, not on the reaction of the interviewee. However, this feels a lot like gaming the system since you cannot press for more when you pick truth or doubt and it's "that is all there is to say about that!" result. I also found that most of the items/pieces of evidence you use to convince people that they we know they are lying are too narrow. There were some cases in the game thus far where I knew the person was lying but that crucial circumstantial pieces of evidence that you could and would use in the real world for further information were useless. For example, a piece of rope used in many murders and an identical rope found outside of a suspect's house is useless because you cannot use it in your conversation with him.

For all of the technical wizardry that goes into making these games, I feel that perhaps designers are missing out on the psychological component that could make them more transparent and accessible to people who are used to using real-world logic instead of the twisted "you are eaten by a grue" game logic. Going forward, I would like to see games become more forgiving in their conversation systems - especially because the player is increasingly being given less control over what and how they interact in those conversations.

Podcast! After Hours Episode 1

Surprise! We now have another podcast! Ever wonder what happens to all that stuff i cut out of the show? Like the coughs and sneezes..... the long, rambling diatribes and non-sequiturs? What's that you say? We already have them in the main podcast? Well, "EFF YOU" buddy! We're doing this anyway!

So, basically this is all the outtakes, cut and slashed bits of the conversation.... They are largely unedited and with no reference surrounding them. I'm trying this as an experiment so let me know how you think this has turned out. Also, i wrote a new theme tune.

Credit goes to juskiddink for the guiro sound i used in the ending theme tune licenced under the CC.

After Hours Episode 1

Podcast Compliant RSS Feed

As a new treat, we also have a podcast-only RSS feed. I know that some of you have readers that don't filter out the other posts so this might help with that:

Podcast-only RSS Feed

If you want to contact us please feel free to email us with comments, shout-outs, suggestions or questions at: the.easiestbutton AT gmail.com

Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 17

Welcome back, campers! Welcome to our "second season" of The Easy Button. We're back and better than ever! I have a new microphone, Tboon has a clean office and I'm still failing at introductions.... well, we can't improve 100% now, can we?

This week on The Easy Button: EU3, Victoria 2, Far Cry 2, Portal 2 (though not in much detail), Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2. We also have a bit of a wander off talking about negative consequences in games and how they pretty much don't exist any more in modern game design.

We've also got a new idea coming up that i'll be posting about soon. So keep an eye out for that!

Here's a link to Spoiler Warning - the MST3K style show i've mentioned a few times on the podcast!

The Easy Button Episode 17

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If you want to contact us please feel free to email us with comments, shout-outs, suggestions or questions at: the.easiestbutton AT gmail.com

Shapes in the Mass effect series...

Mass Effect is, in my opinion, a very strange beast as series go. It is a game series that is founded on no constant concept.... It's a bit like Final Fantasy in that regard. What am I talking about? Well, let me explain...

Shapes:

The universe of Mass effect was founded on curves. Curves in space, curves on ships... hell, even their weapons had curves!!

Mass Effect 2 either forgot this or there was some fundamental shift to a parallel universe where people can be magically resurrected after de-.... oh, wait. Does that explain the story of ME2? Anyway, the shape du jour in ME2 is the rhombohedral, specifically parallelograms. The world has it, Cerberus' insignia has it the ships have it... hell, even all the new weapons have it!

Mass Effect 3? A little too early to tell... but i'm going to go for hexagons.

Story type:

ME1: Save the universe at the cost you see fit. It's a classic pulp sci-fi endeavour complete with inspirational music and varied environments that are fantastical in nature. A bit like an entire series of Stargate or Star Trek rolled into one game.

ME2: Guns of the magnificent seven. The story of 2 is very simplified and actually doesn't make much sense if you let yourself stop and think about it for even a minute. The environments are more bland and similar with fewer types of area to visit... the art style is more utilitarian and less fantastical. The only mission that felt like Star Trek was for Jacob's loyalty, the rest? Bleh, Gears of War eat your heart out.

ME3: We'll see but i'm pretty sure it's Battle beyond the stars with smatterings of both the previous two games.

I'm sure there are more things that you can think of that trend to the untrendable for Mass Effect and its universe. Let me know via the comments or our email address: the.easiestbutton at gmail.com.